pbc writes

Hot take for the year of our Lord 2025, but postcards are the fucking best. You cannot flip over even the most beautifully written email or text and see a cool picture, read a handwritten note, and put it on your fridge. Physical objects keep getting better and better. I can hold an object in my hands, write a message in my own handwriting from Bumfuck, Indiana, and have it show up in my friend's house in New Zealand a few days later. The response I get to even the most mundane handwritten message is unreal. It's personal, it physically represents the time you spent thinking about someone, and mail has the uncanny ability to show up right when the recipient needs a little something special.

It's like magic.

I learned a long time ago that many people younger than me (i.e. most people) don't know how to send a postcard. It's really easy!

Step 1: find a kick ass postcard. Postcards have a picture on one side and a place to write on the back. Fun fact: you can use basically anything. You can use a notecard, or a photograph, or a square you cut from a box of Cap'n Crunch. The Post Office is the best and they do not care. Here's a large format card I found in my collection:

This one even has little guidance on the back, but you don't need any of that. Some people freak out if there are no lines present. Fuck lines. You know your right from your left? You can do this. You don't even need to go half and half. Use 1/3 for the address and 2/3 for your beautiful message.

Step 2: Put a stamp(s) in the top right corner (green square). Step 3: Write the address on the right side (red square). Note that you do NOT need a return address! For a letter, put it in the top left corner of the envelope. For a postcard, you can slap one on there, but that takes up valuable space you can use to draw a butt.

Step 4: The left side is where you write your message. Traditionally, you write, "I am in X city. It is fun. We go to Y attraction tomorrow. We come home Tuesday. xoxoxoxo Pete (if this is also your name)" That's all fine and dandy, but it's frankly some amateur hour horseshit. Instead, you can draw, write song lyrics, do what I do and write nothing but BEHOLD! A WOMAN! (this works best if the postcard picture is of a woman) and send it to politicians, declare your undying love, add stickers, just go bucknuts.

My dear mother taught me her favorite technique, which is to find the most beefcake/cheesecake posties you can and write your messages AS THE PERSON IN THE PICTURE.

"Come back soon, Amy! Our ample bazooms have gone un-spread with coconut oil for too long xoxoxoxox Sasha, Mindy, Cindy, and Lindy"

This is great because, by design, everyone from the postal employee who picks up your postcard to your apartment neighbors at the mail table to your roommates WILL read it. The embarrassment to cost ratio is unbeatable.

[I have confirmed with my friends who spent time delivering mail that they are very bored and read every postcard they pick up or drop off. It's perfect.]

A good postcard should cost you a dollar or less. I'll spend more for something REALLY killer, but I avoid collectibles and instead hunt for straight garbage. There are endless. terrible postcards (Indiana tollbooths - just why??). You can find packs on Amazon or wherever, thrift shops often have bins, souvenir shops have racks, but eBay is also fertile hunting ground. Prompts like "car postcard" or "pizza postcard" or "[state] postcard" are all good. Again, you can use photos, the front flap of your box of antidepressants, a scrap of the Shroud of Turin - the world is your (postcard) oyster!

Stamps: postcard stamps are 56 cents in the US, but the designs are limited. You can use whatever stamps you like, so long as they add up to more than 56 cents. Normal, "forever" stamps are 73 cents and you can get all kinds of fun stuff. I'll spend the extra 17 cents for DnD stamps all day every day. Buy them at usps.com or the post office itself. Save our PO!

International stamps are $1.65, or you can overpay our poor beleaguered PO a bit and use 3 Betty Whites. The post office will deliver a postcard ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD for $1.65, which seems too good to be true (a standard letter costs the same - write your friends letters! But that's another post).

The hardest part is getting addresses from people if you don't know them IRL (or even if you do). There's some trust involved there and you want to be sensitive about asking people where they live so you can send them pictures of butts. If you really want to get into the postcard game but you worry about sharing your own address, a PO Box at the post office is ~$20/month.

I have a regular list of about 20 people who get monthly unhinged/tasteless postcards from me (or from a rotating cast of characters I have created) and they all seem to love it.

My fondest pandemic memories are all sitting at work, writing silly postcards, keeping in touch with loved one I could not physically be with. As with anything non-digital these days, the impact of your small amount of effort is multiplied tenfold for the recipient.